Qilian Mountains

Known as the Little Switzerland of the East, Zhuo'er Mountain weaves red sandstone, alpine meadows and the snowy Amidongsuo peak into one ecological window.

Horses have galloped at Shandan for some two thousand years since the Western Han, making it one of the world's oldest and largest imperial cavalry pastures.

Golden rapeseed fields fill a Qilian Mountain basin at Menyuan, framed by the ever-snowy Gangshika Peak in a striking farmland spectacle.

Dense Qinghai spruce cloaks the Babao River valley, the core water-conserving forest of the upper Heihe, holding alpine snowmelt in the Qilian range.

Part of Qilian Mountains's history: Buddhism Spreading East. Founder of the Liang who reigned for nearly fifty years, four times gave himself to the Tongtai monastery, and died confined in Jiankang after Hou Jing's rebels took the palace city

Part of Qilian Mountains's history: Buddhism Spreading East. Indian monk said to have come to Luoyang under Emperor Ming and to have translated the Sutra in Forty-two Sections

Part of Qilian Mountains's history: Buddhism Spreading East. Indian monk who came to Luoyang with Kasyapa Matanga and is credited with the Sutra in Forty-two Sections

In 121 BCE, after defeating the Xiongnu, Huo Qubing garrisoned the Shandan area, leaving a Han frontier horse-management tradition.

Buddhism Spreading East

Buddhist monks and texts reached Han lands through Central Asia; translation and monasteries gradually embedded the new religion in local society.

In 399, the monk Faxian left Chang'an and traveled through the Hexi Corridor and the Western Regions toward India in search of Buddhist law.